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Published on 04/29/2024
Bill Gates has been a pickler for more than 50 years. George and Amal Clooney famously dink and drive on their home court in LA (she usually wins). And Leonardo DiCaprio has supposedly been late for meetings to finish up a final set. This is pickleball, the latest popularity-surging racket sports mash-up that everyone’s playing.
Just like Bill and Melinda Gates, Crystal was one of the early adopters of pickleball.
Now suddenly it has become the fastest-growing sport in the US. More than a million Americans got hooked during the pandemic. A year later, LeBron James and a cohort of fellow NBA sports champions invested in a pro team, and the likes of Will Ferrell, Kelly Rowland, and Emma Watson signed up for a first-of-its-kind CBS and Paramount televised all-star tournament to raise money for Comic Relief, ramping up its profile further.
A cross between tennis, ping pong, and badminton, pickleball was invented in Washington State in the 1960s by three friends, who fashioned the game from an old badminton net, ping-pong bats, and a perforated plastic ball they found lying around. Their aim was simply to entertain their families – and perhaps the secret of pickleball’s success is that it appeals to all generations. It’s easy for beginners to pick up, the speed of the ball is slower and the serve underarm, while the pickleball court – Crystal Symphony has one; Crystal Serenity a pair – is roughly a third of the size of a tennis court.
Meanwhile, another court sport capturing the zeitgeist is paddle tennis. Also invented in the 1960s, in Acapulco, today it is popular throughout Latin America as well as Spain, where it is the second most popular sport after football, played by six million people.
Much like pickleball, padel has its share of A-list enthusiasts, from sporting superstars such as Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal, and Lionel Messi who has a court at home, to the Prince and Princess of Wales and David Beckham. Fashion houses Prada and Versace have gotten in on the action by designing their own paddle sets and Andy Murray has invested in UK paddle tennis operator Game4Padel.
A tennis-squash hybrid (the scoring is the same as tennis, and shots can be played off the walls like in squash), paddle tennis is fun for all ages and abilities, and super social as it’s usually played as doubles – both of which explains its skyrocketing, universal appeal. These must-try reimagined racket sports are both winners.
Try your hand at both pickleball and paddle tennis onboard Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony. Find the courts on deck 13 and deck 12, respectively.
